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  Even without tasting it I could easily understand why children adored it. The liquid itself was dark amber-red and there were great hunks of fruit floating around among the ice cubes; and on top of it all, Miss Roach had placed a sprig of mint. I guessed that the mint had been put there specially for me, to take some of the sweetness away and to lend a touch of grown-upness to a concoction that was otherwise so obviously for youngsters.

  ‘Too sticky for you, Padre!’

  ‘It’s delectable,’ I said, sipping it. ‘Quite perfect.’

  It seemed a pity to gulp it down quickly after all the trouble Miss Roach had taken to make it, but it was so refreshing I couldn’t resist.

  ‘Do let me make you another!’

  I liked the way she waited until I had set the glass on the table, instead of trying to take it out of my hand.

  ‘I wouldn’t eat the mint if I were you,’ Miss Elphinstone said.

  ‘I’d better get another bottle from the house,’ Lady Birdwell called out. ‘You’re going to need it, Mildred.’

  ‘Do that,’ Miss Roach replied. ‘I drink gallons of the stuff myself,’ she went on, speaking to me. ‘And I don’t think you’d say that I’m exactly what you might call emaciated.’

  ‘No indeed,’ I answered fervently. I was watching her again as she mixed me another brew, noticing how the muscles rippled under the skin of the arm that raised the bottle. Her neck also was uncommonly fine when seen from behind; not thin and stringy like the necks of a lot of these so-called modern beauties, but thick and strong with a slight ridge running down either side where the sinews bulged. It wasn’t easy to guess the age of a person like this, but I doubted whether she could have been more than forty-eight or nine.

  I had just finished my second big glass of fruit cup when I began to experience a most peculiar sensation. I seemed to be floating up out of my chair, and hundreds of little warm waves came washing in under me, lifting me higher and higher. I felt as buoyant as a bubble, and everything around me seemed to be bobbing up and down and swirling gently from side to side. It was all very pleasant, and I was overcome by an almost irresistible desire to break into song.

  ‘Feeling happy?’ Miss Roach’s voice sounded miles and miles away, and when I turned to look at her, I was astonished to see how near she really was. She, also, was bobbing up and down.

  ‘Terrific,’ I answered. ‘I’m feeling absolutely terrific.’

  Her face was large and pink, and it was so close to me now that I could see the pale carpet of fuzz covering both her cheeks, and the way the sunlight caught each tiny separate hair and made it shine like gold. All of a sudden I found myself wanting to put out a hand and stroke those cheeks of hers with my fingers. To tell the truth, I wouldn’t have objected in the least if she had tried to do the same to me.

  ‘Listen,’ she said softly. ‘How about the two of us taking a little stroll down the garden to see the lupins?’

  ‘Fine,’ I answered. ‘Lovely. Anything you say.’

  There is a small Georgian summer-house alongside the croquet lawn in Lady Birdwell’s garden, and the very next thing I knew, I was sitting inside it on a kind of chaise-longue and Miss Roach was beside me. I was still bobbing up and down, and so was she, and so, for that matter, was the summer-house, but I was feeling wonderful. I asked Miss Roach if she would like me to give her a song.

  ‘Not now,’ she said, encircling me with her arms and squeezing my chest against hers so hard that it hurt.

  ‘Don’t,’ I said, melting.

  ‘That’s better,’ she kept saying. ‘That’s much better, isn’t it?’

  Had Miss Roach or any other female tried to do this sort of thing to me an hour before, I don’t quite know what would have happened. I think I would probably have fainted. I might even have died. But here I was now, the same old me, actually relishing the contact of those enormous bare arms against my body! Also – and this was the most amazing thing of all – I was beginning to feel the urge to reciprocate.

  I took the lobe of her left ear between my thumb and forefinger, and tugged it playfully.

  ‘Naughty boy,’ she said.

  I tugged harder and squeezed it a bit at the same time. This roused her to such a pitch that she began to grunt and snort like a hog. Her breathing became loud and stertorous.

  ‘Kiss me,’ she ordered.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘Come on, kiss me.’

  At that moment, I saw her mouth. I saw this great mouth of hers coming slowly down on top of me, starting to open, and coming closer and closer, and opening wider and wider; and suddenly my whole stomach began to roll over inside me and I went stiff with terror.

  ‘No!’ I shrieked. ‘Don’t! Don’t, Mummy, don’t!’

  I can only tell you that I had never in all my life seen anything more terrifying than that mouth. I simply could not stand it coming at me like that. Had it been a red-hot iron someone was pushing into my face I wouldn’t have been nearly so petrified, I swear I wouldn’t. The strong arms were around me, pinning me down so that I couldn’t move, and the mouth kept getting larger and larger, and then all at once it was right on top of me, huge and wet and cavernous, and the next second – I was inside it.

  I was right inside this enormous mouth, lying on my stomach along the length of the tongue, with my feet somewhere around the back of the throat; and I knew instinctively that unless I got myself out again at once I was going to be swallowed alive – just like that baby rabbit. I could feel my legs being drawn down the throat by some kind of suction, and quickly I threw up my arms and grabbed hold of the lower front teeth and held on for dear life. My head was near the mouth-entrance, and I could actually look right out between the lips and see a little patch of the world outside – sunlight shining on the polished wooden floor of the summer-house, and on the floor itself a gigantic foot in a white tennis shoe.

  I had a good grip with my fingers on the edge of the teeth, and in spite of the suction, I was managing to haul myself up slowly towards the daylight when suddenly the upper teeth came down on my knuckles and started chopping away at them so fiercely I had to let go. I went sliding back down the throat, feet first, clutching madly at this and that as I went, but everything was so smooth and slippery I couldn’t get a grip. I glimpsed a bright flash of gold on the left as I slid past the last of the molars, and then three inches farther on I saw what must have been the uvula above me, dangling like a thick red stalactite from the roof of the throat. I grabbed at it with both hands but the thing slithered through my fingers and I went on down.

  I remember screaming for help, but I could barely hear the sound of my own voice above the noise of the wind that was caused by the throat-owner’s breathing. There seemed to be a gale blowing all the time, a queer erratic gale that blew alternately very cold (as the air came in) and very hot (as it went out again).

  I managed to get my elbows hooked over a sharp fleshy ridge – I presume the epiglottis – and for a brief moment I hung there, defying the suction and scrabbling with my feet to find a foothold on the wall of the larynx; but the throat gave a huge swallow that jerked me away, and down I went again.

  From then on, there was nothing else for me to catch hold of, and down and down I went until soon my legs were dangling below me in the upper reaches of the stomach, and I could feel the slow powerful pulsing of peristalsis dragging away at my ankles, pulling me down and down and down…

  Far above me, outside in the open air, I could hear the distant babble of women’s voices:

  ‘It’s not true…’

  ‘But my dear Mildred, how awful…’

  ‘The man must be mad…’

  ‘Your poor mouth, just look at it…’

  ‘A sex maniac…’

  ‘A sadist…’

  ‘Someone ought to write to the bishop…’

  And then Miss Roach’s voice, louder than the others, swearing and screeching like a parakeet:

  ‘He’s damn lucky I didn’t kill him
, the little bastard!… I said to him, listen, I said, if ever I happen to want any of my teeth extracted, I’ll go to a dentist, not to a goddamn vicar… It isn’t as though I’d given him any encouragement either!…’

  ‘Where is he now, Mildred?’

  ‘God knows. In the bloody summer-house, I suppose.’

  ‘Hey girls, let’s go and root him out!’

  Oh dear, oh dear. Looking back on it all now, some three weeks later, I don’t know how I ever came through the nightmare of that awful afternoon without taking leave of my senses.

  A gang of witches like that is a very dangerous thing to fool around with, and had they managed to catch me in the summer-house right then and there when their blood was up, they would as likely as not have torn me limb from limb on the spot.

  Either that, or I should have been frog-marched down to the police station with Lady Birdwell and Miss Roach leading the procession through the main street of the village.

  But of course they didn’t catch me.

  They didn’t catch me then, and they haven’t caught me yet, and if my luck continues to hold, I think I’ve got a fair chance of evading them altogether – or anyway for a few months, until they forget about the whole affair.

  As you might guess, I am having to keep entirely to myself and to take no part in public affairs or social life. I find that writing is a most salutary occupation at a time like this, and I spend many hours each day playing with sentences. I regard each sentence as a little wheel, and my ambition lately has been to gather several hundred of them together at once and to fit them all end to end, with the cogs interlocking, like gears, but each wheel a different size, each turning at a different speed. Now and again I try to put a really big one right next to a very small one in such a way that the big one, turning slowly, will make the small one spin so fast that it hums. Very tricky, that.

  I also sing madrigals in the evenings, but I miss my own harpsichord terribly.

  All the same, this isn’t such a bad place, and I have made myself as comfortable as I possibly can. It is a small chamber situated in what is almost certainly the primary section of the duodenal loop, just before it begins to run vertically downward in front of the right kidney. The floor is quite level – indeed it was the first level place I came to during that horrible descent down Miss Roach’s throat – and that’s the only reason I managed to stop at all. Above me, I can see a pulpy sort of opening that I take to be the pylorus, where the stomach enters the small intestine (I can still remember some of those diagrams my mother used to show me), and below me, there is a funny little hole in the wall where the pancreatic duct enters the lower section of the duodenum.

  It is all a trifle bizarre for a man of conservative tastes like myself. Personally I prefer oak furniture and parquet flooring. But there is anyway one thing here that pleases me greatly, and that is the walls. They are lovely and soft, like a sort of padding, and the advantage of this is that I can bounce up against them as much as I wish without hurting myself.

  There are several other people about, which is rather surprising, but thank God they are every one of them males. For some reason or other, they all wear white coats, and they bustle around pretending to be very busy and important. In actual fact, they are an uncommonly ignorant bunch of fellows. They don’t even seem to realize who they are. I try to tell them, but they refuse to listen. Sometimes I get so angry and frustrated with them that I lose my temper and start to shout; and then a sly mistrustful look comes over their faces and they begin backing slowly away, and saying, ‘Now then. Take it easy. Take it easy, Vicar, there’s a good boy. Take it easy.’

  What sort of talk is that?

  But there is one oldish man – he comes in to see me every morning after breakfast – who appears to live slightly closer to reality than the others. He is civil and dignified, and I imagine he is lonely because he likes nothing better than to sit quietly in my room and listen to me talk. The only trouble is that whenever we get on the subject of our whereabouts, he starts telling me that he’s going to help me to escape. He said it again this morning, and we had quite an argument about it.

  ‘But can’t you see,’ I said patiently, ‘I don’t want to escape.’

  ‘My dear Vicar, why ever not?’

  ‘I keep telling you – because they’re all searching for me outside.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Miss Elphinstone and Miss Roach and Miss Prattley and all the rest of them.’

  ‘What nonsense.’

  ‘Oh yes they are! And I imagine they’re after you as well, but you won’t admit it.’

  ‘No, my friend, they are not after me.’

  ‘Then may I ask precisely what you are doing down here?’

  A bit of a stumper for him, that one. I could see he didn’t know how to answer it.

  ‘I’ll bet you were fooling around with Miss Roach and got yourself swallowed up just the same as I did. I’ll bet that’s exactly what happened, only you’re ashamed to admit it.’

  He looked suddenly so wan and defeated when I said this that I felt sorry for him.

  ‘Would you like me to sing you a song?’ I asked.

  But he got up without answering and went quietly out into the corridor.

  ‘Cheer up,’ I called after him. ‘Don’t be depressed. There is always some balm in Gilead.’

  Genesis and Catastrophe

  A TRUE STORY

  ‘Everything is normal,’ the doctor was saying. ‘Just lie back and relax.’ His voice was miles away in the distance and he seemed to be shouting at her. ‘You have a son.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You have a fine son. You understand that, don’t you? A fine son. Did you hear him crying?’

  ‘Is he all right, Doctor?’

  ‘Of course he is all right.’

  ‘Please let me see him.’

  ‘You’ll see him in a moment’

  ‘You are certain he is all right?’

  ‘I am quite certain.’

  ‘Is he still crying?’

  ‘Try to rest. There is nothing to worry about.’

  ‘Why has he stopped crying, Doctor? What happened?’

  ‘Don’t excite yourself, please. Everything is normal.’

  ‘I want to see him. Please let me see him.’

  ‘Dear lady,’ the doctor said, patting her hand. ‘You have a fine strong healthy child. Don’t you believe me when I tell you that?’

  ‘What is the woman over there doing to him?’

  ‘Your baby is being made to look pretty for you,’ the doctor said. ‘We are giving him a little wash, that is all. You must spare us a moment or two for that.’

  ‘You swear he is all right?’

  ‘I swear it. Now lie back and relax. Close your eyes. Go on, close your eyes. That’s right. That’s better. Good girl…’

  ‘I have prayed and prayed that he will live, Doctor.’

  ‘Of course he will live. What are you talking about?’

  ‘The others didn’t.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘None of my other ones lived, Doctor.’

  The doctor stood beside the bed looking down at the pale exhausted face of the young woman. He had never seen her before today. She and her husband were new people in the town. The innkeeper’s wife, who had come up to assist in the delivery, had told him that the husband worked at the local customs-house on the border and that the two of them had arrived quite suddenly at the inn with one trunk and one suitcase about three months ago. The husband was a drunkard, the innkeeper’s wife had said, an arrogant, overbearing, bullying little drunkard, but the young woman was gentle and religious. And she was very sad. She never smiled. In the few weeks that she had been here, the innkeeper’s wife had never once seen her smile. Also there was a rumour that this was the husband’s third marriage, that one wife had died and that the other had divorced him for unsavoury reasons. But that was only a rumour.

  The doctor bent down and pulled the sheet up a little high
er over the patient’s chest. ‘You have nothing to worry about,’ he said gently. ‘This is a perfectly normal baby.’

  ‘That’s exactly what they told me about the others. But I lost them all, Doctor. In the last eighteen months I have lost all three of my children, so you mustn’t blame me for being anxious.’

  ‘Three?’

  ‘This is my fourth… in four years.’

  The doctor shifted his feet uneasily on the bare floor.

  ‘I don’t think you know what it means, Doctor, to lose them all, all three of them, slowly, separately, one by one. I keep seeing them. I can see Gustav’s face now as clearly as if he were lying here beside me in the bed. Gustav was a lovely boy, Doctor. But he was always ill. It is terrible when they are always ill and there is nothing you can do to help them.’

  ‘I know.’

  The woman opened her eyes, stared up at the doctor for a few seconds, then closed them again.

  ‘My little girl was called Ida. She died a few days before Christmas. That is only four months ago. I just wish you could have seen Ida, Doctor.’

  ‘You have a new one now.’

  ‘But Ida was so beautiful.’

  ‘Yes,’ the doctor said. ‘I know.’

  ‘How can you know?’ she cried.

  ‘I am sure that she was a lovely child. But this new one is also like that.’ The doctor turned away from the bed and walked over to the window and stood there looking out. It was a wet grey April afternoon, and across the street he could see the red roofs of the houses and the huge raindrops splashing on the tiles.

  ‘Ida was two years old, Doctor… and she was so beautiful I was never able to take my eyes off her from the time I dressed her in the morning until she was safe in bed again at night. I used to live in holy terror of something happening to that child. Gustav had gone and my little Otto had also gone and she was all I had left. Sometimes I used to get up in the night and creep over to the cradle and put my ear close to her mouth just to make sure that she was breathing.’

  ‘Try to rest,’ the doctor said, going back to the bed. ‘Please try to rest.’ The woman’s face was white and bloodless, and there was a slight bluish-grey tinge around the nostrils and the mouth. A few strands of damp hair hung down over her forehead, sticking to the skin.